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Image by AFP via @daylife

For all of his talk about jobs and the economy, President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech was not an economic policy blueprint. This was a speech about power -- about increasing the scale and scope of government and the power of those who govern over the American people.

If this claim seems over the top, consider the following:

The President begins his speech by lauding the “courage, selflessness, and teamwork of America’s armed forces...They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together.

“Imagine what we would accomplish if we followed their example.”

That’s right. The President’s vision of the path forward for America is to imagine ourselves as members of a military organization with the American people selflessly following the orders of their superior officers no matter the personal cost up through the chain of command to the President as Commander in Chief. This is the metaphor President Obama chose to explain the relationship between government and the American people.

His message to business owners was: “Ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back to your country, and your country will do everything we can to help you succeed.”

By “your country” the President did not mean American families who might prefer to buy products of equal quality at a lower price. He meant, the federal government would do all in its power to force the American people to ensure the success of the companies following his command. Under the President’s vision, if a company does as it is told, the government will give it special tax breaks and handouts. But, if a company does not do the Commander in Chief’s bidding and creates overseas jobs, it will be hit with punitive taxes, and the money will be given to its competitors.

Of course, American companies that do not take advantage of global supply chains will soon find themselves at a competitive disadvantage to their foreign counterparts. Ignoring this reality does not make economic sense. But in terms of political power, it makes complete sense. Companies going AWOL in response to bad economic policies are an existential threat to a military, uh I meant, militant government economic operation.

What if you are a successful owner of a profitable small business and can neither outsource jobs overseas or bring jobs home? You need to pay higher taxes to fund government expenditures for favored constituents including teachers, whose union dues are a major source of campaign support for Democrats at all levels of government, and “investments” in green energy companies unable to produce energy at competitive prices. At the same time, the capital gains tax rate will be doubled on those who would risk their money by investing in private business capable of making profits by satisfying consumers without tax-payer funded subsidies.

That such higher tax rates will strangle innovation and new business creation is dismissed in the name of “fairness.” So too the loss of hundreds of billions in tax revenues over the next ten years from a higher capital gains tax rate. In the domain of power, the loss of thousands of jobs that will be destroyed or never created and the loss of revenue are acceptable “collateral damage.” High unemployment is a ready excuse to offer more taxpayer funded relief to those who do the government’s bidding. And higher capital gains tax rates will reduce the number of individuals who get rich without the benefits of political connections.